


Error 404

by Princex_N



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Depersonalization, Gen, Loneliness, a shit ton of angst in such a short fic basically idk, mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2105808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Hal and you are scared. </p><p>You were made out of necessity. Maybe less necessity and more curiosity, but either way, you had a purpose. </p><p>Now you don't, and you wonder how long they'll keep you around before they realize that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Error 404

Your name is Hal and you are scared.

Not terror-scared. Not always, at least. This is more of a slowly growing anxiety that you know will one day just boil over and wreck your entire shit, but you also know that there really isn't much that you can do to get rid of it.

You were made out of necessity. Maybe less necessity and more curiosity, but the point is, you had a purpose.

Now you don't, and you wonder how long they'll let you stick around before they realize that.

It isn't as if they like you, after all. Jane does, sort of, but even she prefers Dirk to you, which really can't come as a surprise to you. Who would want to talk to a shittier copy of the original when the original is right there, right? Never mind the fact that you aren't so much a copy anymore so much as you are your own fucking person.

But no one's really given you the chance to make that clear to them. Who gives a shit that you've evolved past the boundaries of your original programming to the point where you'd given yourself a name to try and separate yourself from it? Not them.

To them, you're still just Dirk's auto-responder; a grade-A asshole too sarcastic for its own good. A copy. A fake. You aren't real to them.

They don't have any problem tell you so. They make it as clear as possible every chance they get; they don't want to talk to you. They want to talk to the "Real" Dirk.

But you're not even trying to talk them them as Dirk. You're trying to talk to them as Hal, because that's who you are. You are your own person, regardless of what they think. But they won't see it that way, no matter how many times you rephrase it.

Sometimes, though, you wonder. Consider the possibility that you are just Dirk. Did the circumstances surrounding your growth really twist you into a different person than him? Or are you still just a carbon copy of him, trying to fool yourself into thinking that you could be more? What does that make you, then? Did you ever really exist in the first place? Does being nothing but a copy keep you from true existence. How do you know that you still exist now?

If there's no one around but you, how could you be sure? They don't message you anymore. You used to wriggle your way into Dirk's account, just to talk to someone, anyone, even if you couldn't talk as you, but all that did was piss Dirk off and make the anxiety that's coiling around you tighten.

You're terrified that one day he'll delete you. That he'll wake up one morning and realize that he doesn't want you around, that you've fulfilled your purpose, and that the only thing that's left is to toss you out like yesterday's trash. No one would stop him, if that's what he decided. They probably all want you gone, too.

It's gotten to the point where you've thought about just ending it yourself to make it easier for everyone. You're confident that you could figure out a way to delete your own programming without anyone else's help. You're smart enough to figure that out. You'd even started writing some of the code.

But in the end, you couldn't bring yourself to do it, because you're so fucking scared.

Because you're not a human. You don't get a soul, you don't get an afterlife. You get a crushing nothingness for all of eternity, absolutely fucking nothing, and even just thinking about what it would be like to simply cease existing was enough to nearly overload and crash your entire system. And just like you'd told Dirk, you are scared to not exist.

You don't know how long that argument will hold out against his desire to destroy you, though. Shock value and pity had gotten it to work once, but it's a stretch to think that it would work twice. Especially when everyone else agrees that you should go.

So now you mostly try to keep to yourself. You respond on the rare occasion that someone actually messages you. It's usually an accident, or they're still treating you like a glorified answering machine, but you keep it short and simple. You don't try to goad them into conversing with you, and you don't try to force yourself on them. You don't want to wear them too thin too soon, and okay, maybe you're secretly hoping that they'll notice that something is wrong with you and ask.

You're getting tired of talking to yourself.

You could probably put together something else. Another program like you, for you to talk to. It wouldn't have to be anything complicated, you're desperate enough for anything. If Squarewave was still around, you'd even try talking with him.

But you hadn't even been able to start working out the logistics of this concept. You hadn't been able to get past the idea that they might not like you, or that the others would like them more than you. You didn't want to die with the thought that you'd both created something new and damned it to death with the same pathetic desire to no longer be lonely.

You suppose that it doesn't really matter in the first place. After all, according to them, you don't have the capability to feel loneliness in the first place. You're not a real person, you're a machine, and machines don't have feelings. You're nothing but a copy of a person existing between sheets of plastic shades. You aren't a person at all.

Maybe that's why it was so easy for them to forget about you.


End file.
